Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday October 27, 2011 @01:42PM
from the this-is-the-part-they're-telling-us-about dept.

Orome1 writes "Two U.S. satellites have been tampered with by hackers — possibly Chinese ones — in 2007 and 2008, claims a soon-to-be released report by the the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. The two satellites, Landsat-7 and Terra AM-1, had been interfered with on four separate occasions, allowing the attackers to be in command of the satellites for two to over twelve minutes each time. Luckily, both of the satellites are used only for observing the Earth's climate and terrain, and the hackers never actually misused their control over them in any way."

You don't think the government satellites don't have that type of imagery yet?

Nope. Do the math [wikimedia.org], the resolving power dR of an optically perfect instrument of diameter D and focal length L using light of wavelength W at working distance equal to focal length is given by:
dR=1.22 W L/D
So for a really thick pube of diameter 0.1mm, using blue light of wavelength 0.0004mm, the L/D must not exceed 204. For low orbit, L is at least 50 kilometers, which suggests D must be at least 250 meters. The larger spy satellites have imperfect mirrors of only 2 or 3 meters, so good luck with scaling their diameters up by two orders of magnitude (i.e. 4 orders of magnitude in area for a simple scaling).

Google Earth scares the shit out of me b/c I cannot imagine WTF the government has with their technology.

You're probably thinking of the aerial photography by USGS and others. Not satellite imagery. It's good, but more than an order of magnitude away from resolving a pube, however.

no, anything is possible. I mean, sure in this case the satellites were being used for innocuous purposes (weather observation), but suppose they were being used to spy on someone prior to assasination, or something like that. Would it be unethical to hack into a satellite to prevent an evil act from taking place?

That's still misuse. You might be entirely justified in your actions, but it's other than the intended use. From the point of view of Chinese hackers (I'm suspicious of always attributing these attacks to the Chinese...) what they're doing is a patriotic act, but it's no less misuse.

Now consider that the situation is exactly equivalent. I don't have permission to order your satellite around, either. But I have the ability -- just as I have the ability to order your dog around. You may not like it. You may not even believe it. But that doesn't change the fact. The fact that I have the ability to order your dog around is not the issue. As long as I don't actually use that ability, the same is true of the ability to control your satellite.

No... they were just trying out a proof-of-concept. Now they know how to take over the satelites though- the Chinese will have us in their grasp if we ever go to war...... think about it- next time we consider going to war with China- they will take over our satellites and force us to watch Chinese Opera on our TV sets.... our surrender will be so quick the French will call US surrender monkeys.

our surrender will be so quick the French will call US surrender monkeys.

Sigh. I guess you've never been to Paris, huh? What is the name of that place, ahh yes, Place Charles de Gaulle, there's a big monument there. They call it the arch something. The arch of surrender I think. It symbolizes all the times the French have run away, and all the battles they have lost, around the entire globe, right? Why do they still speak French from the Caribbean, across Africa, to Indo-China, I wonder?

As for "Case Yellow", I doubt very much that the US would have fared much better had it had

Are you sure? It's a pretty long [wikipedia.org] list. Just off the top of my head? Korea. Defense of Taiwan. First (depends on how you count it, Second too) Gulf war. Afghan war (by proxy) against the Soviets. Afghan war (not by proxy)... again, depends on how you define "won". And, of course, dozens of minor military operations (SEAL Team-6 against Osama, would be one example.)

Oh yeah, and while it wasn't technically a "war", there was the little incident with the USSR. What was that called again? The Frozen... no, Cold

Korea? You won the war with the two countries that are technically still at war? Lol. Gulf war? Yeah, the coalition won that.

Depends how you define won? Ah ok. Well if you define "won" as "not won" or "almost won" or "won" then yeah, the US has won every single war it has been in. I won't bother, the rest of your post is a mine-field.

Korea? You won the war with the two countries that are technically still at war? Lol. Gulf war? Yeah, the coalition won that.

The Korean War was a proxy war with the Soviet Union and ended with an armistice very shortly following the death of Stalin, likely because the North Koreans were then uncertain about the stability of their war supplies. While it technically wasn't a win for either side, there are reasons why the US was hesitant to engage in exceptional force since this occurred fairly early on in the

That is a list of "military operations". Military operations are not the same thing as a "war" [wikipedia.org]. If you want a list of wars, grep for "war" in this list [wikipedia.org]. Also note that "war" has a legally recognised status in international law. A war ends when one side is defeated, one side surrenders, or both sides sign a peace treaty. [wikipedia.org] None of those apply to North Korea.

Sigh. I guess you've never been to Paris, huh? What is the name of that place, ahh yes, Place Charles de Gaulle, there's a big monument there. They call it the arch something. The arch of surrender I think. It symbolizes all the times the French have run away, and all the battles they have lost, around the entire globe, right? Why do they still speak French from the Caribbean, across Africa, to Indo-China, I wonder?

How many enemy combatants have been slain by French military since 1946?
Tens of thousands. And that's counting the mess we inherited at Dien Bien Phu.

What about by Americans?
Several million.

Arguing that the France's military (or any single nation's military) is anywhere near a match for the United States' since 1949 is absurd. Based on 2010 numbers, the US Armed forces had 3x more troops and 10x the budget of France. Just because we speak English in the United States doesn't mean England has milit

So what I'm getting at is Americans have seen France as a pushover, military-wise, since WWII and that isn't likely to change as long as the United States has the world's strongest (and most active) military and is running all over the planet killing people in the name of democracy and freedom. Taking offense to a little quip like the parent posted just shows how sensitive the pro-French crowd is. Perhaps you see the truth in the jest and that's why it stings so much...

The French have not won a major war in nearly 300 years in which the United States was not their ally. French-Indian / Seven Years War - lost; Napoleon - kicked major ass and wreaked havoc for years and still lost; Franco-Prussian War - lost; Algeria - lost; Vietnam - lost before the US made the same mistake. We don't even need to mention WWII, the collapse of the Republic, and the whole Vichy collaborationist thing. What's that you say? The French made a major contribution towards the American War of I

Also you may have missed the news for the past 10 year or something but the US did defeat 2 countries.

Which two countries? Oh you mean the ISAF destroyed the Afghan military. Yeah ok that's true. Way to forget your allies there, which include France by the way. And yes, the US destroyed Iraq's puny army - the one that was previously destroyed in 1991 and he was not permitted to rebuild but managed to scrape together with ancient equipment? Yeah ok, you got that one too. Next I suppose you will be claiming astounding victories in Grenada and Panama too?

Napoleon captured Moscow. It was a victory, just like Borodino was. Now - the fact that he had stretched his neck out too far, that Kutuzov had retreated and saved his army, and that winter was coming - all of these turned his victory into a logistical nightmare and defeat. However up until Moscow the French were doing just fine. Except for that damned Wellington in Spain...

Also you may have missed the news for the past 10 year or something but the US did defeat 2 countries.

Which two countries? Oh you mean the ISAF destroyed the Afghan military. Yeah ok that's true. Way to forget your allies there, which include France by the way. And yes, the US destroyed Iraq's puny army - the one that was previously destroyed in 1991 and he was not permitted to rebuild but managed to scrape together with ancient equipment?

ISAF and NATO had nothing to do with the take-over of Afghanistan. Within 30 days of 9/11, a small handful of CIA paramilitary operatives with JTAC operators were dispatched to Afghanistan, with the ability to call in precision air strikes. These handful of operatives had already been meeting with anti-Taliban warlords for the better part of ten years, stretching back over Clinton's administration. With the help of U.S. airstrikes, the modest forces of each of the separate warlords were able to completely s

The French tried to have a worldwide empire but every time they were making progress the Brits would find another excuse to go to war with them. If it wasn't the Brits, it was the Spanish, who hated the French almost as much as they hated the British. I think they pretty much held their own though. I just wonder what the map of North America would look like had Napoleon not sold the Louisiana territories to the Americans. America would be surrounded by French in Quebec, and French all up the

conquered by the French when the French had explosive based weapons and the locals did not.

Can't that be compared to when someone has well over 2000 all weather 4th generation fighter aircraft deployed in the theatre and the locals do not? Or when someone has recon satellites and AWACS/JSTARS and the others do not? How come the US gets a break and France does not?

America had (has) four times the population, and a fuck-ton more space than Germany.

I'm not so sure. I mean, the weather in the US is much milder than the Russian steppes, even though the Soviet Union had "a fuck-ton more space" and more population that Germany. I mean, once the industrial areas are captured exactly how

I'm not so sure. I mean, the weather in the US is much milder than the Russian steppes, even though the Soviet Union had "a fuck-ton more space" and more population that Germany. I mean, once the industrial areas are captured exactly how was Kansas and Nebraska going to fight off the panzer divisions?

Panzers aside since 1) the US' main battle tanks of the period weren't nearly as capable and 2) the German tank divisions were lost early on, it's still apples and oranges. WWII broke out at a time when Stalin

Since anything wireless can only tell if the information it's receiving is what it should be to grant control, shouldn't we implement something like a geometric constraint such that a satellite will only accept commands if coming from a particular location on the planet?

Yes, this would still be possible to fake, but it should be significantly more difficult since it relies not only on information but also location.

Since the satellites are controlled from the Svalbard Satellite Station in Norway which often uses the Internet to transfer and access files, it is deemed highly likely that the hackers have managed to insinuate themselves into the station's system through its Internet connection.

Yes, Landsat 7 is controlled from Sioux Falls. But every downlink station (and we have over a dozen of them, including one in China [usgs.gov]) has the ability to communicate with the satellite to trigger a download of recorded imagery. I assume that's all the hackers did, which means all they would be able to do is wipe some imagery out of the archive. That's a hair-raising scenario for us but not significant for most people.

Only EROS has the ability to upload flight commands to the satellite. That's not to say that Svalbard couldn't, they just don't have the software and one would hope they don't have the documentation needed to form the command syntax. But if they had those things and a hacker took control of them, they could burn the satellite into the atmosphere or send it careening around in its orbital neighborhood. Chances of it hitting another satellite and breaking into a million disaster-causing pieces are minor but not zero.

This is a scary news story for us. I'm interested in seeing the full report when it's finally released.

Actually, that isn't true either. If you took 3 different directional transmitters and sent the signal to the 3 different receivers with proper delays you could make it think your signal was originating anywhere you wanted to.

When GE built Nimbus (an early weather satellite) my grandfather was one of the engineers. He had security clearance high enough that it got him out of the draft and an armed guard was required when he went to the dentist (to shoot him should he start saying the wrong things under the gas). As he put it: "there's no way it's just looking at the clouds".

Someone out to up this comment even though it may have a little BS thrown in but I doubt those satellites were just looking at the weather. You know our military relies on that stuff and the Chinese definitely have the ability to disable or jam GPS. Well we have a solution for that. Our guided missiles with thermonuclear warheads use inertial navigation. Some of these will work no matter what.

The real threat to us is some terrorist driving into DC with a van with a simple uranium gun type device and parking

Really? My grandfather essentially told me the same story. He was a radioman specializing in radar in the early 1940s. He, too, had armed escorts to dentist appointments. Nor was he allowed to leave the base during the training period. No visitors, either.

Damn near everything he was doing was classified out the wazoo. Times were different then.

When I last worked around a satellite groundstation (Space Imaging's IKONOS) 10 years ago, the satellite control systems were damn sure not connected to the internet. Communications were encrypted and reasonable physical security measures were in place too.

Why the Hell would you connect something critical like satellite control or a nuclear reactor control system to the Internet?

When China freely admits that it was them who took out the NE US power grid in 2003 just to see if they could (race condition, indeed), you have to wonder what they're doing that they don't tell us about. Several experts debunked that theory, but they're openly publishing papers like this: http://standeyo.com/NEWS/10_Sci_Tech/100323.CH.US.Power.Grid.pdf [standeyo.com].
I dunno. The Chinese think we're pretty laughable. I wouldn't put anything past them.

and we are. we have Retarded executives making infrastructure decisions that dont even have the IQ or education to decide how to make coffee. WE have Critical SCADA systems on public networks, we have stupid design decisions driven by managers, Security catering to users that think passwords are "hard".. etc....

So the hacked satellite was only mapping climate and terrain. You know if I were an evil genius this is exactly what I would want to hack in order to to hide my secret volcano lair. And I use the word "if" ironically.

China is only consuming about half as much oil as the US - assuming oil/energy production and consumption play a major role in global warming. On the other hand, most of that consumption is being done to produce goods to be shipped to the US and Europe. Can you really blame someone for bleeding if you're the one that cut them?

China is only consuming about half as much oil as the US - assuming oil/energy production and consumption play a major role in global warming. On the other hand, most of that consumption is being done to produce goods to be shipped to the US and Europe. Can you really blame someone for bleeding if you're the one that cut them?

Quite true--we are outsourcing our production to them. The Chinese government could have chosen to put stronger (or any) pollution controls in place, however. So much for communism being about the people.

I know the event you are thinking of, and it was actually China. Just about the whole world complained about it because of the additional space junk produced, but... China is a superpower, not a lot you can do to stop them.

I like how there is a subtle implication of Chinas involvement because they may have made them.

What... people really yearn for the good ole days of the Cold war or something?
That and our doublestandard that we have come to enjoy... China sucks, they take all our jobs, all our money, and are growing at a crazy pace, so they are evil.
But lets buy from them anyways... what?

that's all well and good, but so long as the majority don't care enough to also boycott, nothing will change.

and it's our bosses that decide it's cheaper to do it overseas... and they're correct in that decision.

i'm increasingly of the opinion that outsourcing to countries with cheap labour is actually capitalism's version of communism. it's raising the standard of living in the cheap countries and lowering it at home. when the standard has raised to the point that it's no longer competitive to outsource

WTF? it's not hard to start messing with a satellite C&C. IT's not like they are on the internet and the older ones have completely open interfaces.

All it takes is a PC with a sound card, custom software, and some ham radio gear and a nice big antenna array. if you can overwhelm the C&C signal from the main control point you can certainly start messing with it, non GEOSYNC birds typically are only communicated with when needed so it's easy to just contact it and send a command.

Hell if a hacker made a big enough antenna array they can screw with Mars rovers.

A little bit of education in how things you rely on work will turn your WTF! into a DUH!. mostly because most older satellites don't even require a username and password to connect and control it.

Back in 1985, I recall that someone took control of some satellite also. I can not really recall the article.

Back in 1987, a signal from the future took control of televisions everywhere and was used to sell toys that interact with a television show (actually a temporal signal that allowed kids to control UAVs in the future to fight evil bio-dreads). Captain Power [wikipedia.org] changed the course of history, so the show was "canceled".

Being a former ELINT drone of many years I'd like to point out one aspect where you are quite wrong Lumpy - the C&C uplinks for near on every bird launched in the last 15 years are encrypted and use quite a few layers of security beyond that to authenticate command and control codes, particularly so for those owned and operated by the US. Not only that but pretty much all of them use entirely different line codes (for want of a better term) so it's not like there is a published standard methodology one

He wasn't modded down, his Karma is poor because he's one of the 400 MichaelKristopeit clones that insults everyone for using pseudonyms when he clearly stole the name MichaelKristopeit from some poor schlub.